Ride a bike, annoy a driver, rock the world

There aren’t many ways you can fight authority, change society and tone your thighs all at once. In fact, I can think of only one: By riding a bicycle. It seems like a simple, innocent thing to do. But riding a bike goes against everything our car-loving culture influences, from materialism and the class system to environmental degradation and ill health. There’s always tension between cars and bikes. I used to think it was because drivers don’t like bikes getting in their way, don’t like having to be careful around them and hate the way bike riders selectively follow the rules of the road. Is a cyclist on a sidewalk a sign of civilization crumbling? It might well be. But since civilization as we know it kind of sucks anyway, maybe that’s a good thing. Riding a bicycle is the single most subversive thing a citizen can do. Bikes don’t run on gas, they don’t take up much room, practically anyone can operate one, they don’t cost much to buy or maintain and they keep you in shape. For prevailing systems of power, for those who benefit from the status quo, that’s a huge threat.

The Geo-Political Thing If more people used bikes more often, they would buy less gasoline, reducing our dependence on foreign oil and giving us one less reason to invade oil-rich countries, thus saving the world from messy wars and terrorist backlash. This alarming lack of war would take tax dollars away from inventing invisible warplanes and direct it to paying off debt, increasing foreign aid and curing disease. Unfortunately, fewer people would die by violence and germs, causing the planet’s population to increase to the point where it might threaten the world’s food supply. On the other hand, the developed world throws away almost as much food as it produces. Maybe there would be enough to go around if we just used it efficiently. And maybe there would be even more to eat if we weren’t paving parking lots, growing McMansions on farmland and planting malls in the middle of nowhere that you need a car to get to. But even if it came down to war, a world of cyclists would have long since beaten all the swords into fenders and turned tanks into Rototillers. And, practically, war wouldn’t work anyway. You can’t invade a country on bicycle; everyone would be laughing too hard to shoot each other.

The Urban Planning Thing If most people used bicycles as much as they could, cities would be built differently. No one wants to pedal for an hour to work and back. People would live closer to their jobs. There would be more smaller stores instead of a few huge ones, more coffee shops than transmission shops. And it would be quieter. Downtowns would flourish. Underutilized roads would be converted to pedestrian malls. There would be more street performers. Oh, God! Mimes!

The Job Thing Why do people work? Is it fulfilling? Would they be bored if they didn’t? Sure. But people also work so that they can pay for the car that takes them to work to make money to pay for the car that takes them to work. This is insane. Only a bicycle can break you out of this vicious cycle.

The Health Thing If the rumours are true, exercise is good for you, both mentally and physically. A culture of bicyclists would put fewer demands on the health-care industrial complex. Big Tobacco would wither and die. Big Pharma would wonder where all their medicated customers went. Freed from the crushing expense of funding hospitals, governments would cut taxes. The average worker’s take-home pay would increase. People could afford to retire at a younger age and would enjoy longer, healthier and happier senior years. The cruise ship industry would boom. Curling ratings on TV would skyrocket.

The Alien Revenge Thing We live indoors, if you think about it. Even when we go “outside,” we’re still on the only planet in our solar system that has breathable air. You wouldn’t start your car and leave it running in your living room. That would be nuts. Yet we think nothing of contaminating the only air in the known universe with noxious chemicals and toxic particles. Sometime in the future when a more advanced society lands on Earth and starts sifting through our rubble, they’ll discover what we did to our air and how we turned our beautiful blue marble into a blob of lead. And they’ll say something like (I’m translating now, so it might not be accurate) “They did WHAT? Were they nuts? What a bunch of IDIOTS!” It’s up to us to prevent that superior, post-apocalyptic future race of cruel alien know-it-alls from having a laugh at our expense and making fun of our spindly legs. May is National Bike Month. Fight the power. Feel the freedom. Stay off the sidewalk.

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